UCSD, teach thyself

Vested interest in real estate

As the local political push for more high-density residential infill continues to mount, UCSD, accustomed to spinning out experts on cell phones and biotech, is expanding its curriculum into a more prosaic if similarly lucrative big-money field. A new real estate and development minor in the school’s Urban Studies and Planning Program is being rolled out. “It recognizes that the next generation of real estate and development innovators will need hybrid skills in order to understand the nexus between real estate finance and development, data visualization and analysis, urban planning and design, sustainability, demographic trends, and new technologies.”

According to the school’s November 20 announcement, UCSD “recognizes the importance of supplementing classroom instruction with professional development opportunities and uses the San Diego-Tijuana city-region as a living laboratory for hands-on, project-based learning.”

... Students won’t have to venture far to study the university’s controversial approach to development. “Traffic, parking, fire protection are all community issues no one at UCSD has to deal with because they are accountable only to the regents,” Janay Kruger, the chairwoman for the University City planning group told reporter Marty Graham last summer. “For over ten years we’ve been begging for a fire station that we need more with each project.”

Added resident Cameron Volker, “They tell you they are putting in a single building, and they build the roads to access it, and then they turn around and slam in more tall buildings. We tried to have a good relationship with them, and they lied flat out about what they were planning.” Noted La Jollan Joy Ulrich, “The campus was supposed to be a maximum of 10,000 people, and they are planning for 45,000. Now we can look forward to some not particularly interesting buildings that block people’s ability to see and feel the ocean.”